Sunday, 5 February 2012

Lisa Marklund is, apparently, a highly successful Scandinavian crime writer so I had high hopes for this CD set. However, I was sadly mistaken. It was so tediously slow and annoying that I only managed to listen to 4 of the 12 CDs before I gave up in disgust.

Set in Sweden, a young woman has been found murdered. So far, so good. The story is presented from the perspective of a young female trainee reporter called Annika. We know pretty quickly who the murdered woman was and that she was, surprise surprise, some sort of prostitute. We know who her boyfriend/pimp is, her best friend, where she came from, who is the lead police investigator, and that the first person to find the body allowed her pesky little dog to chew one of the hands. We also get a description of the dog's turd. Thank you very much, I really needed that. For some reason we do not know, this person does not report the body. And we also get some information about a Swedish Minister who is most probably involved. And that's about it, taking 4 boring CDs to divulge this.

Much is made of how hot it is and this is repeated over and over and over again in a variety of unnecessary ways. Marklund also takes pains to describe the street names which reminded me so much of Stig Larsson, except his portrayal of Stockholm is infinitely more evocative.

But what really, really annoyed me was that instead of using verbs such as inquired or asked, the verb wondered was repeatedly used and it was just totally inappropriate and totally irritating. This could have been a problem with translation but it just spoilt any kind of atmosphere or engagement.

So, there you are. A very disgruntled Maggie who is now at odds with Marklund's millions of devoted fans. If you have read any of Marklund's novels and enjoyed them please leave a message on this blog telling me exactly what I'm missing.